Crypto
Trump’s meme coin creates billions from thin air, rattles cryptocurrency market – The Times of India
A digital token debuted by President-elect Donald Trump has rattled the cryptocurrency market, attracting billions of dollars of trading volume while stoking concerns about conflicts of interest.
Trading under the “Trump” ticker on the Solana blockchain, the token’s market value surged to $15 billion over the weekend, data from CoinMarketCap show, after the Republican touted it on his social media accounts on Friday.
The digital asset’s market capitalization then slid below $10 billion on Sunday in New York after Trump’s wife Melania also unveiled a coin, drawing traders who seek to capitalize on rapidly shifting speculative demand for memes.
Meanwhile, the wider crypto market struggled over the weekend, including a dip in the largest token, Bitcoin, and a shaper retreat for second-ranked Ether. SOL, the cryptoasset associated with the Solana digital ledger hosting the Trump meme coins, bucked the trend and posted a rally.
Speculative flows
The “size of the capital flowing” to the Trump token left most other coins trading “poorly” outside of SOL and some related assets, said Sydney-based Richard Galvin, co-founder of hedge fund DACM.
The website for the president-elect’s token describes it as the “the only official Trump meme.” The project’s art features an illustration of the incoming US president with his fist in the air — a reference to his response in the aftermath of an attempt on his life during a campaign rally last year.
The small print on the website states the president-elect’s token isn’t intended to be an “investment opportunity, investment contract, or security of any type.” Still, crypto-minded Trump fans immediately started buying. Major exchanges like Coinbase Global Inc. and Binance Holdings Ltd. said during the weekend they intended to list the token on their platforms.
The website for Melania’s project also says that the token isn’t supposed to be an investment opportunity or security, adding that “Melania memes are digital collectibles intended to function as an expression of support for and engagement with the values embodied by the symbol MELANIA.”
Trump’s embrace
Trump made explicit overtures to the crypto industry in the months before and after his election. Bloomberg News has previously reported that he’s considering an executive order designating the asset class a “national priority.”
The president-elect’s previous forays into crypto include profitable collections of nonfungible tokens, digital collectibles that show him in a variety of poses and costumes, including as a superhero. Along with his sons, he’s also endorsed World Liberty Financial, a project that has been much-hyped but for which details remain scarce.
Representatives for Trump didn’t return requests for comment.
Crypto is notorious for meme coins, tokens with questionable inherent value that sometimes briefly surge if they catch a social media tailwind before sliding as attention turns elsewhere.
The Trump token traded at about $39 as of 7:30am on Monday in Singapore, down from an earlier peak of $75.35. Bitcoin slid to $100,000, Ether changed hands at $3,161 and a cooling SOL rally left the digital asset at roughly $240.
Crypto
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Crypto
Crypto Sector Suffers Exodus of Reliable Retail Investors | PYMNTS.com
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Crypto
The Last Frontier For Cryptocurrency Adoption
While studies reveal institutional investors and wealth managers believe tokenized ETFs will drive mainstream market adoption for cryptocurrency, there looms the theft of bad actors that most often go untraceable.
Currency throughout history that became mainstream
ShutterStock
Barriers to the expansion of tokenization are starting to fall as major investment firms consider launching tokenized ETFs, according to new global research by London-based Nickel Digital Asset Management (Nickel), Europe’s leading digital assets hedge fund manager founded by alumni of Bankers Trust, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan.
Its study with institutional investors (pension funds, insurance asset managers and family offices) and wealth managers at organisations which collectively manage over $14 trillion in assets found almost all (97%) believe the potential launch of tokenized ETFs such as BlackRock’s will be important to the expansion of the sector with nearly one in three (32%) rating the development as very important.
The study also reflected the belief that tokenization will continue to grow, with nearly 70% of respondents believing that fund managers looking to tokenize investment funds and asset classes will increase over the next three years.
Nickel’s research with firms in the US, UK, Germany, Switzerland, Singapore, Brazil and the United Arab Emirates found growing awareness of the benefits of tokenization. Private markets are seen as offering the greatest potential for tokenization, with almost 70% seeing private equity funds as the asset class with the most opportunity, followed by fixed income (55%) and public equities (42%).
Anatoly Crachilov, CEO and Founding Partner at Nickel Digital, said: “Tokenization is quickly moving from theory to real-world adoption as institutional investors grow more comfortable with its benefits and see major players enter the space. When firms like BlackRock step in, it fundamentally shifts the conversation. This development is timely for our multi-manager vehicle as expanding liquidity depth will allow some of our pods to start trading tokenized assets in the coming months.”
To address potential criminal threat, an advanced detection system to identify and trace blockchain funds connected with criminal activity was presented earlier this week at the Annual CyberASAP Demo Day in London.
The system, called SynapTrack, enables faster and more accurate detection of fraudulent activity using blockchains and cryptocurrencies, where traditional anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing systems struggle to keep pace.
Although current fraud detection methods pick up unusual activity, they deliver an extremely high rate (40%) of false positive reports. These require manual checking by compliance professionals, resulting in backlogs in identifying and acting on suspicious activity.
The SynapTrack system is designed to deliver a substantially lower rate of false positives. It has already been tested using real-life data from the notorious 2025 Bybit hack, where criminals stole $1.5bn of digital tokens from a cryptocurrency exchange. SynapTrack traced the hacker with 98% accuracy.
The team behind SynapTrack is keen to hear from exchanges, financial regulators or law enforcement agencies who want to test the prototype in real-world conditions.
SynapTrack uses a validated methodology to score the likelihood of transactions being part of a money laundering scheme. It has a self-improving algorithm that continuously adapts to new tactics – dynamically identifying suspicious patterns in blockchain transactions. It has a universal cross-chain capability, and is designed around how compliance teams work, presenting results in a dashboard. No infrastructure changes are needed for installation.
It is relatively easy to obscure fraudulent or criminal activity by moving funds between blockchains, or dispersing them across many blockchains, in what are known as ‘cross-chain’ transactions. It is these transactions that pose the greatest difficulty for existing anti-money laundering systems.
SynapTrack was developed by University of Birmingham computer scientists Dr Pascal Berrang and PhD student Endong Liu, in collaboration with blockchain developer Nimiq. Dr Berrang’s research is in IT security and privacy on blockchain, artificial intelligence and machine learning. The subject of Endong Liu’s PhD is transaction tracing. Nimiq is supporting with blockchain-specific insights, knowledge of real-world constraints, and implementation.
The team is currently fundraising to ensure regulatory readiness and complete the team with a CEO and software developers.
Dr Berrang said: “The last few years have seen a near-exponential growth in blockchain transactions. While many of these are legitimate, blockchains are attractive to criminals as funds can be moved very quickly to other jurisdictions. Our work with Nimiq and the creation of SynapTrack is addressing this black spot, and will enable more effective regulation, making the whole ecosystem of blockchain safer and more trustworthy.”
With the financial market and cybersecurity industry converging, cryptocurrency is here to stay.
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